The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans

An American POW in Germany

Susan Larson

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2013
• Edition: 2
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807153093
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The literary tradition of New Orleans spans centuries and touches every genre; its living heritage winds through storied neighborhoods and is celebrated at numerous festivals across the city. For booklovers, a visit to the Big Easy isn't complete without whiling away the hours in an antiquarian bookstore in the French Quarter or stepping out on a literary walking tour. Perhaps only among the oak-lined avenues, Creole town houses, and famed hotels of New Orleans can the lust of A Streetcar Named Desire, the zaniness of A Confederacy of Dunces, the chill of Interview with the Vampire, and the heartbreak of Walker Percy's Moviegoer begin to resonate.
Susan Larson's revised and updated edition of The Booklover's Guide to New Orleans not only explores the legacy of Tennessee Williams and William Faulkner, but also visits the haunts of celebrated writers of today, including Anne Rice and James Lee Burke. This definitive guide provides a key to the books, authors, festivals, stores, and famed addresses that make the Crescent City a literary destination.

A New Orleans Reading List

FICTION, POETRY, AND
CHILDREN’S BOOKS

I have spent most of my adult life reading about New Orleans—about every aspect of our culture, our history. I loved the new novels as they came along, cooked from the cookbooks, and shared the children’s books with my kids as they were growing up. And I daresay few folks had the job of reading the post-Katrina works. So what follows are some deeply personal, idiosyncratic reading lists, culled from the best of my reading life. If I included every book I loved, this book would never be finished—and it’s long enough as it is! I hope this will get readers and visitors started on their own reading lists.

THE CORNERSTONES OF NEW ORLEANS’S
LITERARY MYSTIQUE

A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

This novel won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for its author, who committed suicide in 1969. Ignatius Reilly, a medievalist who dreamed of philosophy but made his living selling Lucky Dogs, bumbles around New Orleans in this comic odyssey, which reveals the hilarious character of the city. Beyond that, this is a novel that holds out hope for every aspiring writer; after the author’s death, his mother flogged the work relentlessly before presenting it to Walker Percy, who became its champion with Louisiana State University Press.

Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice. New York: Knopf, 1976.

This 1976 best seller set Rice firmly on the path to literary fame and fortune, creating a mythic overlay of the city, drawing on its ethereal beauty, its cemeteries, its dark past. Her vampires have continued to talk, joined by witches and werewolves, in her supernatural pantheon. Tourists still drive by Rice’s last New Orleans residence at First and Chestnut in the Garden District.

The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy. New York: Knopf, 1961.

This National Book Award winner introduced Walker Percy’s basic concerns to the American reading audience—his struggle against despair, his idea of the search for meaning—through the character of Binx Bolling.

A Streetcar Named Desire, by Tennessee Williams. New York: New Directions, 1947.

This is—pardon the expression—the Big Daddy of literary works about New Orleans. The steamy sexiness, the French Quarter languor, the brilliant iconography—all combine to make a perfect literary portrait.

SUSAN’S ESSENTIAL READING LIST

BOSWORTH, SHEILA

Almost Innocent. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1984.

Slow Poison. New York: Knopf, 1992.

No one is better than Sheila Bosworth at evoking the many layers of Catholic life in New Orleans.

BOYDEN, AMANDA

Babylon Rolling. New York: Pantheon, 2008.

This is the second novel (after Pretty Little Dirty [2006]) by the University of New Orleans graduate and professor. Babylon Rolling captures the lives of the inhabitants of a single block of Orchid Street.

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PRIZE WINNERS
Boyden, Joseph. Through Black Spruce. (Scotiabank Giller)
Butler, Robert Olen. A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. (Pulitzer)
Ford, Richard. Independence Day. (Pulitzer)
Gaines, Ernest. A Lesson before Dying. (MacArthur)
Grau, Shirley Ann. The Keepers of the House. (Pulitzer)
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Neon Vernacular. (Pulitzer, Kingsley Tufts Award)
Kushner, Tony. Angels in America. (Pulitzer)
La Farge, Oliver. Laughing Boy. (Pulitzer)
Toole, John Kennedy. A Confederacy of Dunces. (Pulitzer)

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BUTLER, ROBERT OLEN

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. New York: Grove Press, 1991.

This 1993 Pulitzer Prize–winner took its inspiration from the large Vietnamese community in eastern New Orleans, stories of culture clash and adaptation.

CRONE, MOIRA

Dream State: Stories. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995.

Crone is a former professor in the Louisiana State University creative writing program; her novels and short stories are dreamy, evocative masterpieces of southern life.

GAINES, ERNEST

A Lesson before Dying. New York: Knopf, 1997.

Gaines is truly a Louisiana master. This novel tells the moving story of Grant Wiggins, a young schoolteacher who is tasked with working with a young man in his rural community who is about to be electrocuted. (It’s based on an actual case.) A Lesson before Dying was the first One Book / One New Orleans selection.

GAUTREAUX, TIM

The Missing. New York: Knopf, 2009.

Gautreaux writes comic short stories of incredible wit and charm (Welding with Children [1999] is a marvelous example), and this novel, about a New Orleans department store detective who takes to the Mississippi River in search of a missing child, is a picaresque tale with deep insight into the human desire to fill in our missing parts.

GILCHRIST, ELLEN

In the Land of Dreamy Dreams. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1981.

Gilchrist’s short stories are brilliant evocations of upper-class life in New Orleans, drawing on her own history here. (She now divides her time between Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Ocean Springs, Mississippi.)

MARTIN, VALERIE

The Great Divorce. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1994.

Martin’s best-known work is Mary Reilly (1990), a historical novel in which Dr. Jekyll’s housemaid is the main character; it was made into a movie starring Julia Roberts in the title role. This underap-preciated novel is her version of the story of “Cat People” with a New Orleans setting.

PIAZZA, TOM

City of Refuge. New York: HarperCollins, 2008.

Piazza, also the author of the post-Katrina classic Why New Orleans Matters, threw himself into this novel about two families, one white, one African American, and their experiences in the year following Katrina. It was selected for the 2008 One Book / One New Orleans reading initiative.

WILTZ, CHRISTINE

Glass House. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994.

Christine Wiltz, a New Orleans native, is the author of this literary novel about race relations, three mystery novels featuring Irish Channel detective Neal Rafferty, as well as a biography of New Orleans’s last celebrated madam, Norma Wallace, The Last Madam: A Life in the New Orleans Underworld (2000). This novel is an unflinching look at race relations in New Orleans.

FICTION—A SURVEY

ALGREN, NELSON

A Walk on the Wild Side. New York: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1956.

Nelson Algren (1909–81) set this picaresque novel in 1930s New Orleans, and its portrayal of the bohemian life is partly responsible for the city’s reputation for wickedness. Drifter Dove Linkhorn called New Orleans “the town of the poor-boy sandwich and chicory coffee, where garlic hangs on strings and truckers sleep in their trucks. Where mailmen wore pith helmets and the people burned red candles all night long in old fashioned-lamps.”

BARTON, FREDRICK

With...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• A Note on the Second Edition
• Welcome!
• Tales of the Crescent City A Long and Wonderful History
• A Literary Address Book
• A Literary Datebook
• New Orleans Bookshops
• Literary Resources
• A New Orleans Reading List Fiction, Poetry, and Children’s Books
• A New Orleans Reading List Nonfiction
• A New Orleans Reading List Katrina
• Lagniappe: Writers’ Favorites Beyond Books
• Acknowledgments
• Index